1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure generally relates to a method for determining the level of degradation of a road marking and, more particularly, to a method that determines the level of degradation of the road marking via a reference data that is selected for comparison purpose according to the shutter speed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Road markings are used on paved roadways to provide guidance and information to drivers and pedestrians. When the road markings degrade, the road markings are not able to provide proper guidance for the drivers and pedestrians. In a worst case, it can raise the safety issue.
When the road markings become shabby or start to peel off, the government will renovate the road markings in order to improve the safety of the drivers and pedestrians. Before the renovation of the road markings, the level of degradation of the road markings should be examined. In this regard, an image capturing device is used to capture the image of a road marking and generates a real image of the road marking. Then, the real image is compared with a reference image to determine whether the road marking is in a condition that needs the renovation.
To provide a sharp image of the road marking, the image capturing device usually photographs the road marking with a proper shutter speed based on the light intensity of the environment, so as to properly expose the image. Therefore, the real image of the road marking is captured at a different shutter speed according to the light intensity of the environment. However, since the reference image is often captured at a single shutter speed, if the real image and the reference image have different shutter speeds, the comparison between the real image and the reference image is not objective. This leads to an inaccurate determination on the level of degradation of the road marking.
In light of the deficiency, it is necessary to provide a method for determining the level of degradation of the road marking.